How to format your references using the Australian Family Physician citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Australian Family Physician. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Smaglik P. Demographic shifts. Nature. 2001 Nov 22;414(6862):3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Deplancke B, Verstrepen KJ. Genetics. Variable outcome of mutations. Science. 2012 Jan 6;335(6064):44–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

Li B, Yu ZH, Fei SM. Geometry of quantum computation with qutrits. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2594.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Sun J, Liu X, Huang J, Song L, Chen Z, Liu H, et al. Magnetic assembly-mediated enhancement of differentiation of mouse bone marrow cells cultured on magnetic colloidal assemblies. Sci Rep. 2014 May 30;4:5125.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Mesterton-Gibbons M. A Concrete Approach to Mathematical Modelling. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2007.

An edited book

Graben PB, Zhou C, Thiel M, Kurths J, editors. Lectures in Supercomputational Neurosciences: Dynamics in Complex Brain Networks. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. X, 377 p. (Understanding Complex Systems).

A chapter in an edited book

Lam J, Guerin F, Vasconcelos W, Norman TJ. Building Multi-Agent Systems for Workflow Enactment and Exception Handling. In: Padget J, Artikis A, Vasconcelos W, Stathis K, Silva VT da, Matson E, et al., editors. Coordination, Organizations, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems V: COIN 2009 International Workshops COIN@AAMAS 2009, Budapest, Hungary, May 2009, COIN@IJCAI 2009, Pasadena, USA, July 2009, COIN@MALLOW 2009, Turin, Italy, September 2009 Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010. p. 53–69. (Hutchison D, Kanade T, Kittler J, Kleinberg JM, Mattern F, Mitchell JC, et al., editors. Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Australian Family Physician.

Blog post

Andrew E. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2013 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. The ‘Coldest Place in the Universe’ Is Shaped Like a Ghost! Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/‘coldest-place-universe’-shaped-ghost/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. DOD’s Full-Time, Fully Funded Graduate and Undergraduate Education Programs. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1974 Mar. Report No.: B-175773.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Goodison SE. The undiscovered country: Homicide, dynamic change, and deterrence in Washington, D.C. Neighborhoods, 1998-2006 [Doctoral dissertation]. [College Park, MD]: University of Maryland, College Park; 2014.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Poniewozik J. Streaming at the Top of Her Lungs. New York Times. 2016 Oct 14;C3.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (1).
This sentence cites two references (1,2).
This sentence cites four references (1–4).

About the journal

Full journal title	Australian Family Physician
ISSN (print)	0300-8495
Scope